


When you pinch me try to pinch me where there's fat

by Missy



Category: Laverne & Shirley (TV)
Genre: Cooking, Cooking Lessons, Early Mornings, F/M, Family Fluff, Flashbacks, In-Laws, Morning Cuddles, Mornings, Pregnant Character, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26388973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Lenny tries to fit in with the DeFazios, and gains a new tradition to be passed down to the next generation.
Relationships: Laverne DeFazio/Lenny Kosnowski
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	When you pinch me try to pinch me where there's fat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Futsin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Futsin/gifts).



> The latest chapter in marriageverse!

_Dink. Psht_

Lenny Kosnowski came awake to the scent of steam heat coming up and filling his bedroom radiator. He burrowed closer to his wife and once again thanked the universe for small modern conveniences. This was a newer building – the heat not only came up more quickly than it did back on Knapp Street, but the outages between were less frequent.

“Mph,” his wife muttered, rolling over and drooling down his neck. When he automatically tried to pull her close, her belly bumped into his. 

Lenny still wasn’t used to that – his lithe, muscular, athletic wife being rounded and soft, the baby within her only weeks away from making its debut – at least according to Laverne’s doctor’s estimate. For now, it lay snuggled up between the two of them, and Lenny wondered if it’d be on time- with luck appearing a couple of weeks before Christmas, and then they’d be able to take it home before the holiday arrived. Edna had told them not to make bets on it – “it’s not like you can order them COD,” she’d said. He was promptly roundhouse kicked in the ribs for the temporary sin of forgetting his offspring. 

Laverne grunted and rubbed herself into his chest. Then she nuzzled his shoulder and dribbled there. “The drool of my beloved,” he said. She snorted, then wrinkled her nose.

“Brr.” She pulled the blanket up over her head.

“Heat’s coming up,” he told her, and instantly felt guilty for not turning it higher before they went to bed.

“S’OK,” she mumbled. Soon enough the room felt cozy again. When he glanced at the clock, Lenny realized it was past five o’clock. And Saturday morning. Which meant they didn’t have to be in church, and they didn’t have to get to work, and they could sleep until they felt like normal human beings…

He’d just begun dozing off again when a loud clattering sound rang up from the kitchen and set them both upright.

They exchanged a quick look and groped for the bats they kept hidden under the bed. Their new neighborhood was marginally safer and quieter than the one they’d spent half their twenties in, but there were occasional robberies and break-ins, and they both knew after a childhood growing up in tenement apartments that it was better to be safe than sorry. 

Lenny automatically pushed Laverne behind him when they crept out of the bedroom and up the hallway. He absolutely worried she’d be injured somehow in the ensuing struggle, and tough as she was it was his responsibility to protect Laverne, protect the baby now. 

She was the one who hit the living room light before he was ready for it, and Lenny roared in what he hoped was a very macho way and waved the bat in what he hoped was a menacing way.

The shouting was immediately mitigated by Italian-sounding curse words, and Lenny realized who was in his kitchen – thankfully before he smashed the bat into his father in law’s graying dome. Laverne dropped her own bat in the coat rack and pressed a palm to her chest.

“Jeeze, Pop! Whatt’re you trying to do, scare the baby out?” 

“Whaddya mean, scare the baby out!?” Frank snapped. “I told you I was gonna be over early Saturday before I opened the restaurant to make you marinara for The Day of the Immaculate Conception!”

Laverne groaned and rubbed her temples. Either Frank hadn’t actually told her he was coming, or he had and it had slipped her mind. Lenny was smart enough not to question his wife’s usually wonderfully big brains. “Need a hand Mr. – Frank?” He still wasn’t used to calling Mr. DeFazio by his first name, and Frank avoided correcting Lenny whenever he failed to make the right distinction. 

He grunted. “You don’t know nothing about sauce. Watch it when I have to leave, be sure it don’t burn or bubble over, that’s all you gotta do!”

Lenny winced at the rejection. Frank wasn’t a hundred percent accepting of his relationship with Laverne even two years plus into their marriage – though Lenny had deliberately done everything the “right way.” He’d even asked Frank for Laverne’s hand, though he hadn’t told his very modern wife about that one.

He still didn’t get anything about being Italian. Though they went to the same church and celebrated the same feast days, there was always a saint that Lenny couldn’t recall to mind whose name day required a huge gastronomic gesture of loyalty. Laverne was equally flummoxed about all of the saint days he’d been raised to celebrate thanks to his Polish grandfather. They only knew that they loved one another, and that they generally worshipped at the altars of Elvis and Buddy Holly more than that of their Lord and Savior, though they were fairly sure that God understood that they cared about religion…well, enough.

“Pop,” Laverne groaned, sitting down gingerly at their kitchen table, “be nice to Len, please, would ya?”

“Hey, I didn’t charge him for the hundred bucks I had to pay to fix the ceiling after all those spitballs he threw up there made a tile fall down, did I?”

Lenny smiled nervously. “Sorry,” he said. “Lemme chop some onions for you or something.”

“Your nose will run,” Frank grumbled. 

“Nah, Kosnowskis are different. Our ears leak.” He grabbed a kitchen knife.

“I’m gonna have an apple and chop parsley, and then I’m going back to bed. Next time why doncha CALL first?” she asked her father, two inches from bellowing.

“You told me I could come! You gave me a key!” he yelled. 

Someone rapped against the hall wall. “Would you please be quiet? It’s Saturday!”

“Sorry, Missus Renaldi!” Lenny and Laverne called, single-voiced. 

“Our nextdoor neighbor,” Lenny apologized. He shook his head and rinsed his hands before he started chopping vegetables up. 

“Sounds like a nun with a head cold. Chop the onion smaller,” Frank ordered, and Lenny, fearing for his fingers, did as he was asked.

Frank didn’t speak again until Laverne had laid herself out on the couch, one hand on her stomach, sipping from a glass of milk. “Hey,” Frank whispered. “You been taking her to the doctor?”

“Yes!” Lenny said quickly.

“You make sure she’s taking her vitamins?”

“Every day!”

“And that she’s eating right and getting the sleep she needs?”

“Yes, Mr. De Fazio!” 

“Good work,” Frank said, and then he slapped Lenny so hard on the back his knees buckled. “Now give my grandkid an Italian name.”

That Lenny couldn’t promise him, but he tried to pay close attention to the sauce until Frank declared it was time for him to leave.

“Let it simmer – SIMMER, DON’T BOIL – until six o’clock. Then you take the pasta I left on the counter, you boil it in salt water for five minutes. You put the pasta together, you serve it, you don’t add in anything nutty!”

“What if she wants fish heads?”

“I like fish heads,” Laverne said, dozing on the couch.

“Fine, then you do what makes her happy. Or I’ll mash your face in!” Frank said.

“Yes, Sir!” Lenny said quickly. By the time his father-in-law left, Laverne was asleep. Lenny gently tucked a blanket around her feet, then sat down in the battered easy chair they’d bought at a rummage sale at the beginning of the marriage. 

But that wasn’t good enough for Lenny. So he laid down on the floor beside her and watched TV until they were both half asleep.

The sauce didn’t boil over and proved to be the best he’d ever had – and probably had some kind of magic effect on his wife, because after they finished dinner that night, she went into labor.

*** 

_Sixteen years, eight months and one week later._

The sound of someone crashing around in the kitchen woke Lenny up with a start. His eyes flew to his alarm clock – three in the morning. He tried to be reasonable as he groped around on the floor for the baseball bat he perpetually kept beneath the bed, even though the neighborhood had only gotten quieter (more boring, Billie and Barb insisted) in the eighteen years since he and his wife had moved there. It was probably one of the kids. Maybe.

“Laverne,” he whispered urgently, and shook her lightly.

“Ugh,” Laverne groaned, rolling away from him, “five more minutes.” Then she shoved her finger up his nose, which Lenny gently removed as he slid out of bed. She’d been up all night with a sick Billie, and she needed sleep more than he did.

Lenny crept down the hallway, bat in hand, but let it drop into the coat rack - he was relieved to note the familiar shape of his teenage son, blond hair shining in the low light of the kitchen, hunkered over the stove, mumbling softly to himself as he tried to stir something that smelled like burning coal around in a small saucepan.

“Quit slapping it, it’s already dead,” Lenny told his son, and Andy squawked, his voice breaking, as he spun around to confront his dad.

“Did I wake you up?” Andy asked.

“Just a little. Whatt’re you doing? Making a midnight feast?” Lenny asked.

“Nah, I was trying to make some of grandpa’s spaghetti sauce, but I forgot what temperature I’m supposed to start on.” He took the saucepan to their sink, and then poured water into the concoction, making it hiss.

“Medium-high, and what are you going all fancy for?”

Andy flushed dully and reached into the fridge for more tomatoes. “Uh. There might be a girl I wanted to invite over tonight.”

Lenny grinned. “Aww, really? I’m so happy!” 

Andy bumped the fridge closed with his hip. “Dad, can you be cool? And I dunno if she likes me back, so we’re just doing a study date.”

“Uh huh,” Lenny remarked. He sucked his teeth. “Well, I can get the sauce going. See, you gotta start with the tomatoes…”

As Lenny put the brew together, he thought of his father in law. Frank had accepted Lenny and Laverne’s relationship with time – had even managed to come to enjoy Lenny’s presence in his life, though three lively grandkids definitely helped grease their social wheels. It was hard, when Frank sold the business to Carmine and moved to LA with Edna, to maintain relations with them without bitterness lingering in the air. Only time and serious illness had settled things between the family, ended the estrangement before it was too late.

Frank DeFazio had died proud of Lenny, of his daughter. It was all a son-in-law could ask for.

By the time the frigid November sun began to rise and fill the apartment with pink light, Lenny had the sauce underway. Andy watched with his serious eyes and his bright mind whirring away.

Lenny didn’t know his wife was awake until she wrapped her arms around his middle and hugged him; he squeezed back, her arms soft and warm as they held tight.

And in the distance, before his daughters got up, the heat began to come up.

_Dink. Psht_


End file.
